Campaigns say Obama, Clinton focused on election
The morning after the candidates met in Washington, officials say they talked about how to win the White House. Obama makes a surprise visit to Chicago to promote its 2016 Summer Olympics bid.
WASHINGTON — The morning after a private, unannounced meeting between presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama and rival Hillary Rodham Clinton, the campaigns said the talks focused on winning the White House in November -- not who would be Obama's running mate.
"It's an example of the kind of unprecedented cooperation you are going to see between the two campaigns," Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), a Clinton supporter, said today on ABC's "Good Morning America." "This is a good both symbol and first step in terms of uniting the party to win in November."
Robert Gibbs, communications director for the Obama campaign, called the meeting last night "very cordial, very productive." Pounded by angry reporters on Obama's plane last night as it took off to Chicago without the candidate, Gibbs told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program that the campaign opted for secrecy to give the two candidates privacy from the glare of media attention.
"These two candidates wanted to have a meeting that was private, where they could talk," Gibbs said. "We probably can't do that without a big media circus, so we did a private meeting ... and the press corps and myself flew back to Chicago."
The two met for about an hour at the Washington, D.C., home of California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who told reporters this morning that she took them to her living room, where they sat "in two comfortable chairs facing one another." She then left them to talk, with glasses of water at their sides.
"There was a desire on both sides, I think, to have private meeting," said Feinstein, who went upstairs to work as the meeting began at 9 p.m. "They called me when it was over," she reported. "I came down and said, 'Good night everybody, I hope you had a good meeting.' They were laughing, and that was it."
Feinstein, who lost a tight gubernatorial race to Republican Pete Wilson in 1990, said that after a campaign lose, "you're sorting out your feelings. Hillary's going to be giving a big speech tomorrow. Barack is trying to put things together for a major presidential campaign. So there's a lot of decompression, nerve endings, all things that need to come together."
The opportunity to "sit down, just the two of them, have an hour together, was a positive," she said.
After a grueling 16-month campaign in which Clinton, the presumed front-runner at the beginning, was overtaken by Obama, the Clinton campaign announced today that she will formally endorse him Saturday at noon at the historic National Building Museum.
